Howard Fast

Reviews / Votes

"Sorin brings Fast's personality to life in a way that is both sympathetic and critical. The narrative is fluid and engaging."-Tony Michels, author of A Fire in Their Hearts: Yiddish Socialists in New York
"An engaging account of Fast that pays attention not only to his politics but also to his writings. . . . It should stimulate discussion of the appeal of Communism for some American Jews in the mid-20th century."-Deborah Dash Moore, coeditor of Gender and Jewish History
"Winner, 2012 National Jewish Book Awards, Biography, Autobiography, Memoir Silver Medal winner, Biography category, 2013 Independent Publisher Book Awards"-
"Fame-hungry, wealth-obsessed, with a voracious appetite for women, bestselling author Howard Fast rose from the hardscrabble streets of his 1920s New York childhood to become a popular author and, perhaps more improbably, 'the public face of the Communist Party in America.' In Sorin's intriguing if dense new biography, Fast's life becomes an excellent prism through which to view the history of leftist activity in the years straddling WWII, along with the anticommunism hysteria of the 1940s and '50s. . . . A notable study of a thorny protagonist whose life has much to reveal about the times in which he lived and about the interplay of political belief, personal identity, art, and ambition."-Publishers Weekly
"Sorin . . . has written a heavily researched critical biography of Fast. . . The volume's strength is its explication and analysis of the complex social and political context of Fast's activism and creative work. . . . Sorin's lengthy critique of Fast's adherence to Communism long after most American writers and intellectuals had abandoned the party, and his shameful public silence on Stalin's crimes and Soviet anti-Semitism, are of significant import. . . . Recommended."-Choice
"An intriguing biography, not least for its examination of how Fast interwove his political activism, his Jewishness and his art during the heyday of McCarthyism. Recommended."-Recorder (Melbourne)